Don't Penalize Travel Agents While Stiffing Consumers

New bills in the U.S. House and Senate plan to reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration while claiming to protect consumers in the process.

In reality, the bills will do no such thing and will only hurt the travel industry.

Moment of truth time: When's the last time you read all of the notices while buying an airplane ticket?

You know, the notices about all of your "rights" that you've said you read every time with a little checkmark on the airline website or OTA—when have you actually read them?

What are they? How many are there? Can you even Google them quickly enough to find them before you get bored and move on?

Just admit it: You've clicked the little box without ever reading.

It's the travel version of the "End User License Agreement" (EULA) that comes with new software or signing up on a new website. The name itself instills so much abject boredom that I'd like to just check a box pretending I read something somewhere between "User" and "License."

I've never read one. You've (likely) never read one.

I have a former high school classmate that reads the EULA for everything she signs up for. She's a lawyer and doesn't use Facebook because she wasn't comfortable with some of the language in the agreement as she was signing up. She is, easily, the only consumer I would ever expect to know all of the rights and notices one is supposed to know before buying an airline ticket. I would ask her to make sure, but no Facebook, remember?

But you know who does know all of the notices? Travel agents.

Booking airfare through travel agents is always going to be cheaper and far more easier than booking one's own travel. Even with the advance of powerful online platforms using spokesmen like William Shatner, a simple call to a travel agent can get you on a plane quicker, easier and far more cost-effectively than spending a bunch of time doing that leg work yourself.

The big difference, however, is that a travel agent has no box to click to pretend you read the various airplane notices. They have to read every single notice, out loud.

Not only is the process onerous, but it kills sales. If agents choose to skip the process, the Department of Transportation can levy massive fines—up to $30,000 per infraction.

In real life, what does that mean? It means that a travel agent can forget to mention you're flying on a codeshare flight and that the plane might have been sprayed by pesticides and lose up to $60,000 in one fell swoop. In an industry where the vast majority of travel agents make around $40,000 per year, that's nonsense.

According to the American Society of Travel Agents (ASTA), travel agencies sell around 430,000 airline tickets per day—the majority of tickets sold in the United States. Moreover, around 62 percent of those transactions are either on the phone or face to face. These same travel agents have never charged a baggage fee or carried hazardous materials on a plane, but they're forced (by penalty of law) to bore you with details you likely already know because of common sense.

They are, literally, the only ones made to play on this playing field.

The FAA Reauthorization bills could fix the problem, you know. They could lessen penalties that would crush small businesses. They could create websites travel agents could refer their clients to rather than having to read every single notice. Or, they could simply exempt face-to-face and telephone communication from the disclosure process.

This is why ASTA and their members oppose wide swaths of both the House and Senate versions of the FAA reauthorization bill. Although there are good points to both—seriously, no telephone calls in the air—both bills place more restrictions on travel agents without actually protecting anyone.

Even if you're not a travel professional or you actually really love reading arcane legalize, this is the biggest issue with these reauthorization bills: They don't actually protect consumers!

You know what would actually protect consumers? A passenger bill of rights that actually affects airline behavior as seen in the EU and as discussed recently in Canada.

It would mean consumer protection if, as in other countries, airlines couldn't just bump passengers indiscriminately without providing fair remuneration. Rather than just a boring notices saying the airline can really do whatever it wants, an actual consumer protection would mean actually penalizing the airlines for doing whatever they want.

Another notice no one is going to read and no one wants to listen to does not protect consumers.

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